Ratios of Understanding

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coberst
Posts: 1516
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2005 6:30 am

Ratios of Understanding

Post by coberst »

Ratios of Understanding

I am going to deal with numbers and ratios not that I think my numbers are accurate but I think they may be useful for comprehending certain things.

Suppose we establish a knowledge-to-understanding ratio, i.e. the amount we know divided by the amount we understand (i.e. need to create).

I would say that a frontier family might have K/U ratio of 20/1. As time passes and there is less need for understanding (creativity) and more need for knowing because the demands of the frontier diminish and ‘civilization’ encroaches I would say the K/U ratio might go to 50/1.

After one hundred years I suspect the ratio might easily move to 100/1; after leaving the farm and moving to town and going to work in the factory the ratio might very well go to 1000/1.

Today’s modern man or woman may very well have a ratio of 10,000/1. The person with a PhD might very well have a ratio 100,000/1.

I have heard college professors say that you never really understand a subject until you try to teach it. I suspect a PhD who is also a long time teacher might have developed an understanding of many things and thus dropped the ratio back to 10,000/1.
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